As a grand finale to Valcare’s annual women’s month campaign, a stylish high tea event was hosted at Kronenburg Estate on Tuesday 27 August 2019. The chosen 15 Proteas of the Valley ladies, along with the previous two years’ Proteas and honourable guests from the valley, were spoiled with an afternoon of encouragement, entertainment, delicious eats and special treats.
The inaugural Franschhoek Street Mile will take place in November 2022, in this prestigious Cape Winelands village. Located in South Africa’s Valley of Dreams, the village is positioning itself and its breath-taking surroundings as a centre of sporting excellence.
The route takes in the historic heart of the village, amongst others Huguenot Street with the iconic Huguenot Memorial at its terminus. The day’s slate of events will include a Men’s Invitational race that promises to attract the cream of South Africa’s mile talent, a Ladies Open race and a Sport Celebrity Race.
Favourable feedback has already been received from top trainers and former elite athletes, such as Johan Fourie and Elana Meyer about the Men’s and Ladies Races. Confirmed entries in the Sport Celebrity Race will be announced in due course.
Runners will compete for the richest pot of all South Africa’s Street Miles. Equal prize money is offered for the Men’s Invitational and Ladies Open Races.
La Petite Ferme is a Cape Winelands tourism institution. With accommodation, a restaurant and boutique winery it has been offering many a seasoned traveller the complete winelands experience. The secret behind La Petite Ferme’s many successful years is the ability to re-invent itself and keep delivering a relevant and high quality product to each visitor while still keeping its welcoming and heart-warming hospitality at the core.
Boschendal’s Appellation Series – Elgin 2015 Chardonnay has been awarded the Best Elgin Chardonnay Trophy, Best Chardonnay Trophy and ultimately the Best White Wine of South Africa Trophy at the 2017 International Wine Challenge (IWC). Additionally, Boschendal was awarded Gold for its Elgin Pinot Noir 2015 at the IWC and to add to these impressive awards – it was also announced that Boschendal has garnered Gold at the prestigious Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) for its Boschendal Elgin Sauvignon Blanc 2016 and Boschendal 1685 Shiraz 2015.
Claire Horn and Associates Physiotherapy is celebrating fifteen years of “Physiotherapy in Franschhoek” this year. We are now 4 physiotherapists – Claire Horn, Villene Alderslade, Bronwen Talbot and Tracy Prowse – and have 3 treatment sites: Franschhoek, Pearl Valley and Bridge House School. Alishia Jafthas, well known to many of you, is our office manager and handles the phone, accounts and all of us!!
A new shop – almost entirely devoted to soft, smooth skin – has recently opened opposite the Franschhoek Town Hall. The Tatler stopped by to find out more.
Litchi and Titch is the brainchild of Lecia Durham with business partner Debbie Schriekker – respectively the Litchi and Titch in the business’ name. Lecia and Debbie both have sales and marketing backgrounds and share a passion for all things natural and environmentally conscious, especially cosmetics. Starting a business to profit from their passion seemed a logical step, so they took it in 2017. Their first product, a paw paw balm, proved an instant success and they soon started adding other products to the range.
Spotting a leopard in the wild is a rare and special experience. A sighting apparently almost as rare is to find the entire Cape Leopard Trust (CLT) team in one place! On Thursday, 14 September, this rare occurrence actually happened, when the ten members of the Cape Leopard Trust team met at Leopard’s Leap Family Vineyards. The venue was particularly appropriate, as Leopard’s Leap is one of the Trust’s main sponsors.
The reason for this unusual gathering was to bring together the usually widely-dispersed research, education and administrative teams for a group photo, and to showcase the new t-shirt range. It was also a valuable opportunity for a catch up in person rather than via Skype, and a chance to welcome the newest team member, Ismail Wambi to the fold. The stylish, new t-shirts are part of a new merchandise range that will shortly be available for sale on the CLT website as part of a green gifting campaign.
The Cape Leopard Trust is an active predator conservation working group with projects in Cape Town, the Boland and the Cederberg. It uses research and environmental education as a tool for empowering conservation, finding solutions to human-wildlife conflict. Since its inception in 2004 it has become an authority on predator conservation not only in the Cape, but also nationally.
You might be a weekend warrior or even a professional competitor – but whatever your fitness and training goals are for 2021, make sure that safety is part of your resolutions for the new year.
“The start of a new year is a perfect time to focus on shaking off the holiday kilos and shape up for a new you. There are a few basic tips to follow to help make sure that you can focus all your attention on your training without having to worry about criminal elements,” says Charnel Hattingh, Head of Marketing and Communication for Fidelity ADT.
Like many of us, Dalewood Fromage’s Rob Visser and his team found that they had a bit more time on their hands during lockdown. Unlike many of us, they put that time to good use! The result is the addition of a whole new range of dairy products to their range.
Visitors to the Cheesery Shop on the farm can now also stock up on buttermilk, cream and crème fraiche for their cooking or baking projects. While there they might as well pick up some of the estate’s hand-made, lightly-salted butter and the full-cream stirred Jersey yoghurt. The latter is entirely free of additives, preservatives, thickeners, stabilisers, emulsifiers, milk powder and sugar making it as natural and healthy as can be. For your home-made pizzas and salad the full-cream Feta is just the ticket!
Dalewood’s unique recipe was formulated by Rob Visser who studied Dairy Technology at Elsenburg College. After years of experimenting, time in France sniffing out traditional cheese making secrets and countless cheese tastings Dalewood Cheese was launched in 2000.
Dalewood’s single Jersey herd grazes each day on bio-dynamically grown pastures surrounded by vineyards. Because of its focus on regenerative farming Dalewood is able to produce all-natural products with no preservatives, colourants or flavourants and suitable for vegetarians.
The Cheesery Shop™ is open:
Monday – Friday 09h00 – 16h00
Saturdays 09h00 – 15h00
Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays.
Due to Covid and the size of our Shop we are unfortunately unable to offer any cheese tastings.
Text: Editorial Desk | Image: Supplied
Boschendal offers all that you’d expect of a wine estate – restaurants, wine tasting, picnics – and then some! Also on offer are half and whole day spa treatments, walking and mountain bike excursions (on 30 km of new trails), fly fishing – and horse riding. It can be stated quite categorically here that if ever there was an enthusiastic team it is that which now runs the equestrian activities.
The equestrian team is headed by Hans Mbalula and his brother Petrus. Hans was formerly a barman at Boschendal’s deli/Werf restaurant/picnics), but on hearing Boschendal’s CEO discussing the pros and cons of riding and related activities on the estate he immediately volunteered to give up bartending and to run this new initiative.
It transpired that he had, in fact, been raised on a Free State farm and as a boy had ridden regularly before and after school to carry out a variety of farm duties such as cattle and sheep herding. He had, too, it was discovered, learned early on how to win the confidence and calm down a wild horse so that within a few days (often in fact within one day) he could saddle and ride it without any of the bronco busting histrionics of the Wild West’s cowboys. He had also learned how to put horses into harness to pull a cart or a plough, again using a minimum of force and a maximum of coaxing.
Boschendal now has 13 horses, including a few Shetland ponies, the majority of which are massive Shire horses, Friesians, Clydesdales and Percherons, all of them giants of the horsey world – they grow to 16 hands or more. Being immensely strong, they are capable of carrying a 100 kg or 110 kg rider in armchair comfort. Surprisingly, however, they are also quite exceptionally gentle so that, despite their size, they can be and sometimes are ridden by quite small children. A few lucky riders are offered the opportunity to mount these massive horses, but most of Boschendal’s outrides are done with well-trained smaller horses.
Today the Boschendal horses can be hired for outrides and these usually take the visitor into unspoilt conservation fynbos territory where waterbuck and eland have been introduced by Boschendal’s owners. For those prepared to rise early Boschendal offers a breakfast ride in its extensive conservation territory with delicious eggs, bacon and mushrooms cooked over an open fire. The rides can last up to three hours and afford the visitor a total escape from the overcrowded mechanised world.
Shire horses are, however, at their most impressive when they are acting as draught animals. Their huge size make it possible for them easily to pull carts, the weight of which would bring lesser horses, even fully trained hackneys, to their knees.
At Boschendal the management now offers visitors one-hour cart rides almost daily. The carriage can take a small number of adults and a larger number of children. Passengers sit on a beautifully restored 19th-century landau and this gives them a tranquil lovely way to see the estate and to watch these big horses working so willingly. The foremost carriage pair are black Friesian mares. They are sisters and are named Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth. Their names are appropriate because they exude a patrician, almost regal ambience, as if aware that they are several cuts above today’s typical livery stable animals.
Booking is essential for a carriage ride, but, as Samantha Lundie, wife of the CEO of Boschendal who is closely involved with this operation, has said, “An overnight visit to Boschendal these days is incomplete without a carriage ride – it somehow epitomises all that the estate stands for.”
horses@boschendal.co.za | 021 870 4211
